


I didn't know I was lonely ('till I saw your face)

by hondayota



Series: the lucky ones [7]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Other, Pre series, angst but good, chill at the end, i love them, its just friendship tho, mini henrietta is back, some sleepwalking shit, this is before they've met adam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 01:45:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10322693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hondayota/pseuds/hondayota
Summary: (Sorry for another request; I just really love your ficlets and I am full of prompts lol) Could you write about Gansey sleepwalking/talking at Monmouth?





	

Monmouth before Ronan was quiet. 

Gansey stood in the center of his new apartment and let his heart beat through Henrietta, let the thought of the town, his town, murmur in his ears. He faced the window-wall that overlooked the parking lot and spread his arms wide, reaching to either side toward the walls and everything beyond: people, life, magic. Gansey dragged the toe of his shoe across the floor, tracing patterns in the dust. Glendower, he wrote, and then laughed at the absurdity of it all, at how this, somehow, felt closer to the end than anything else had. He wasn’t sure if he was happy. 

Laughter quickly dissolved into a coughing fit as the dust Gansey had roused caught him, but the coughing only made him laugh more. Gansey turned in a slow circle, admiring his new building. It needed work, there was no denying it, but Gansey had never met something old that didn’t interest him. He looked forward to fixing it up, making it his own. He grinned. “I’M HERE,” he yelled, the words ricocheting off the emptiness until their origin was everywhere, was nowhere, “DO YOU HEAR ME, GLENDOWER? I’M HERE!” 

The new living space didn’t make it any easier, and neither, though Gansey told himself differently, did living alone. The worst part – the thing Gansey hated the most about sleepwalking, hated because he feared it – was not remembering. Waking up in the spare bedroom when he knew he had fallen asleep in the living room, buried under a comforter with his journal open on the pillow, Gansey could deal with. He could deal with the danger of sleepwalking with no one there to wake him, had come up with methods over the years through research and experimentation, but there was nothing he could do about the memory issue. He had tried cameras, once, in Europe, but he couldn’t stand to watch himself like that: his body, without his mind, his carefully cultivated control. 

Waking up and not remembering felt too much like coming back into himself after a panic attack. They shared the same moment where Gansey rolled into a crouch and stared at his hands, mapping the lines on the backs of them and running fingers over his own skin like a psychic. The same moment when he wondered are these really mine? was that really me? why did it happen? Sometimes, with a panic attack, he could force himself to know, to think of the wasps and the summer heat. Sleepwalking had no rationalization, because he didn’t know what had happened without his permission. Gansey hated things he couldn’t puzzle out, couldn’t give logic to. 

He didn’t sleep for fear of sleepwalking, for the panic of forgetting. Gansey spent the day on Henrietta’s sun-warmed streets, exploring the town everything had led to. With every breath of Virginia air, scented with mingling lilies and hope, Gansey fell in love. He tried not to think of Monmouth at night, and himself alone in the darkness. He collected pieces of Henrietta to take with him as company: an antique lamp for his desk, a new mint plant from a booth outside a gelato restaurant, a wrench to keep in the Pig’s glove compartment from an auto shop with a freckled teenager inside. He picked up a pizza last, from a joint called Nino’s, and ate it back at Monmouth, surrounded by journals cataloging his life’s work. When exhaustion weighed on his bones, he broke apart the pizza box and thought of what he’d seen of Henrietta, the care he wanted to give his new surroundings. He began to build, and he did not sleep.

 

Ronan could hear Gansey at night. 

Ronan didn’t sleep for fear of dreaming. His presence in Monmouth was still fresh, as was the cut of his father’s death against his skin. Ronan didn’t sleep, because the only thing he saw when he closed his eyes was his father, and his father’s blood, and his mother’s expressionless face as the Lynch brothers left The Barns. Left Aurora. So Ronan didn’t sleep, because taking things out of his dreams was wrong and it had probably hurt his father, and would definitely hurt the only good thing he had left, Gansey.   
Instead, he paced his room and dropped empty beer bottles out the window to hear them break against the parking lot pavement. He like the shattering, the music of destruction and the knowledge that, for once, he wasn’t the thing being destroyed. Breathing deeply, Ronan let the last bottle slide out of his fingers and watched it break. He looked at Gansey’s Pig in the parking lot, his father’s BMW. His BMW.

“Shit,” He said. He turned away from the window and moved toward the door, heading for the kitchen/bathroom/laundry for more to drink. When he swung open the door, Gansey stood there. Ronan took a step back, unsettled. “Fuck, man, don’t you knock?” He shot. 

Gansey didn’t move. He was looking directly at Ronan, but Ronan wasn’t sure Gansey was seeing anything. “Hey,” Ronan ventured, waving a hand in front of Gansey’s face, “What the fuck?” Gansey turned away, soft footsteps echoing as he padded back toward his bed. Ronan, against his better judgement, followed. 

“Wasps,” Gansey whispered. 

“What?” Ronan glanced around as fast as he could, picking up a book from Gansey’s desk to use as a weapon. “Where?”

“Everywhere,” there was a tremor in Gansey’s voice that reminded Ronan, horribly, of finding his father murdered. “Wasps,” Gansey said again, and then he began to scream. 

“Jesus fuck!” Ronan shouted. He approached Gansey carefully, sucking in breaths and telling himself that no matter how much it felt like one, this was not a dream. Gansey was not a night terror. About a foot away, Ronan stopped. Gansey still screamed, moving his arms as though to swat wasps. Sometimes he gasped as though he were being stung.   
“Gansey,” Ronan yelled. “Wake up. Wake up.” He could feel tears welling in his eyes, and he blinked them back. 

After what seemed like ages of Ronan yelling, Gansey jumped. He blinked at Ronan, and Ronan noticed that Gansey was crying, too. Gently, Ronan placed a hand on Gansey’s arm and lowered him into a seated position near Mini Henrietta. Ronan sat next to him, close enough that their shoulders bumped. “What happened?” Ronan asked.

Gansey blew out a breath. “I sleepwalk. I take it from your face that this was a,” he paused, reaching for a bottle of glue and tiny cardboard roof shingles, “a particularly bad episode.”

“I guess. I don’t fucking have anything to compare it to but that – fuck.” Ronan took the glue from Gansey and began applying it to the shingles, passing them back to Gansey when they were ready. 

“What,” Ronan could see Gansey turning his next words over on his tongue, always careful, always practiced, “What exactly…did I do? I can’t stand not knowing.”

Ronan handed Gansey a bottle of red paint for the Nino’s sign. “You’re not alone anymore, you know, Dick? I can look out for you and shit. I’ll know what you don’t, even though that’s like, two fucking things. Don’t worry. So, let me think of what happened. You started by scaring the living shit out of me.”

**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading i hope you enjoyed!! i haven't written in so long lol i hope this doesn't suck. also yes all my titles r from song lyrics so what, it's fine, it's all good. this was finished at like 11 pm and i did not check it over so whoops. anyway if you like this comments and kudos are appreciated always!! 
> 
> u can also follow me on tumblr @ nymphhadora
> 
> OH ALSO: i wanted to write another part of this??? like post trk when ronan is living at the barns again and gansey is packing up for the road trip but i was tired and i wanted to post what i had cause it was a good ending point but if u would want to see more pls hmu


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